Spreading the Gospel of Cricket

Having moved to Panama and being force to leave their beloved Vicuñas cricket team, Juliet “Curly Pain” Solomon and Jade “Deathly Hallow/Keychain” Rodriguez Solomon searched in vain for a team to join and a coach to train them. Email appeals to the Cricket Panama website went unanswered. Reported sightings of cricket matches have yielded, to date, no results. So they have taken matters into their own hands.

They discovered the City of Knowledge Herbalife Nutrition Club and proselytised vigorously therein the gospel of cricket, luring in members by promising that it is “kinda like baseball but better”. 

On Saturday 16 January an inaugural cricket training was held on the beautiful grounds of Ciudad del Saber, a former military base situated alongside the Panama Canal.

Lacking stumps and not willing to risk decapitating potential players with a proper cricket ball, tennis balls were borrowed and electrical tape purchased. Pads were used as wickets and international cricket veteran Rodriguez Solomon pressed into service as coach.

A makeshift pitch was commandeered between two small goalposts at a safe distance from the many yoga practitioners and joggers and, to the utter delight of one playful dog who kept stealing the ball, training began. 

Molly, the Blue Weimaraner makes off with the ball.

Making fielding practice interesting to say the least.

No, jogging is boring. I want to stay and play cricket!

Noooooo! I want to play cricketttttt!!!!

After instruction on the basics and some warm-up catching and fielding practice, and once the usual misconceptions were dispelled (don´t throw your bat away before running. Run between the wickets not around the periphery of the entire field of play. No, Señor Felix, you don´t get batters out by hitting them with the ball as they run past.) a brisk game of pairs cricket was played. 

Rudimentary forward defensive.

Follow through?

  

Illegal delivery?

Jordan facing the fearsome Deathly Hallows.

Vanessa shows her stuff.

This wicket keeper has a tough job!

Daring them to step out of their creases.

Crossing for a run.

Joyous confusion. (Spot the ball).

The makings of a team.

Cricket comes to Panama.

 Vanessa rapidly grasped the concept of bowling and Edith proved to have an impressive throwing arm. Young Jordan, Vanessa´s son, was not pleased that he had to leave to go to basketball practice and swore to return the following Saturday.

Señor Felix, however, clearly felt that the game could be improved by the introduction of elements from lucha libre and enthusiastically tacked all and sundry, using such illegal tactics as tickling the younger batsmen before they could get safely back into their crease. He responded to all rebukes by claiming “it´s Latino cricket!”

Illegal tickling.

Livin´ La Vida Loca or Don´t Get Mad, Get Rich.

Got me looking, so crazy, my baby

I'm not myself, lately I'm foolish, I don't do this,
I've been playing myself, baby I don't care
'Cuz your love's got the best of me,
And baby you're making a fool of me,
You got me sprung and I don't care who sees,
'Cuz baby you got me, you got me, so crazy baby.

Got me looking so crazy right now, your love´s

Got me looking so crazy right now (in love)

Got me looking so crazy right now, your touch

Got me looking so crazy right now (your touch)

“Crazy In Love" Beyoncé

The billionaire Beyoncé could afford to have let her guard down I suppose (though perhaps not, only time will tell). But for some of us, constant vigilance is essential. Acquiesce just once to the title of crazy or loca and it´s a slippery slope baby.

I guess lyrics like “your love´s got me looking like a mature human being in an equal partnership” just aren’t catchy.  But I will tell you what is: the “loca” habit. It is like neglecting a small toe fungus and ending up with chronic athlete´s foot.

Since I have been living in Latin America I have been tirelessly fighting gender stereotypes on my children´s behalf. It is no longer acceptable in my house to tell my son to “stop crying like a girl” every time he is upset. He is now allowed to watch and discourse upon “My Little Pony” without attracting the derision of his father. When he won a pink bottle of  perfume at a tombola stall I eventually managed to convince my house helper that yes, it was his and belonged in his, not his sister´s room and that yes, he was allowed to spray it on himself if he so wished. (This was traumatically received, “but Señora, it will make him gay!).

But it seems that I have neglected things on my own behalf. I admit that I have always embraced the word “crazy”. As a member of the Solomon Clan it would be delusional not to do so. Crazy was non-conformist; crazy was adventurous; crazy was interesting, independent, intriguing. But “loca”…

As Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez, founder of group Latina Rebels, Chonga Mujerista says here about tattooing the word “loca” across her knuckles:

"I got the tattoo as social commentary. In my culture, I feel as though women are dismissed a lot with this one-liner: 'loca.' As Gloria Anzaldúa says, there are only three directions a lot of us can go: 'to the church as a nun, to the streets as a prostitute or to the home as a mother.' As someone who is unwed, childless and in academia, I am too unattached and too fresa. And since there is no present male-body to validate me, I am often just called 'loca.' So I have chosen to reclaim that word, because if being loca means that I love myself, think critically and value my future outside of a hetero-monogamous union — then loca I will remain."

But, as a wed, child possessing and professional woman, I have discovered that “loca” is not just a dismissal, it is a weapon. Disagreement with the husband? “Ahh,” he says as he waves a hand and turns away, “estas loca”. Trying to engage in a rational discussion about different views of child raising, household budgeting, whose responsibility it is to go to school meetings, or why I am “being rude” to the delivery man who has kept me waiting for two days with no explanation or excuse? “Tcha, (as he walks out the door to go play football) estas loca”.

And worse, much worse, is the casual turning to my children and saying, “tu mama es loca”. Final. Fucking. Straw.

Of course, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is why it is a WMD as sinister as any nuclear bomb. The catch 22 of gender relations. Because if you react to being called crazy you get called guess what? Crazy. “Stop calling me that!” gets an infuriatingly raised eyebrow and a smug shrug which screams “see what I mean? Loca.” The more you hear it, the crazier you act, and the crazier you act the more easily you can be dismissed.

As a fairly volatile individual I tended to fall into the trap time and again. Then I made a conscious effort not to. To ignore it, pretend I didn´t hear so as to not to give it legitimacy. But that was also counter-productive since none of the necessary discussions were ever had and I ended up doing an unfair share of parenting because I couldn´t be bothered to be called crazy, or I confined my rants of frustration to similar-minded folk on Facebook.

None of which is satisfactory. I am allowed to call myself crazy but you are not. But how to make the point without sounding loca? Such an inoffensive word. So often used as a term of endearment. So silly to object to it when there are so many more pressing everyday issues to deal with. Don´t be so hypersensitive. I ask politely in a non-heated moment not to be called that word and am rewarded with a pat on the shoulder and an indulgent “ya, ya, ‘ta bien”. Until the next time.

Eventually I got it. Of course there are more important things to consider that your wife´s objection to a mere word. Work, the economy, utility bills, the cost of living. I agree. So here is part of the cost of living with me. I have instituted a fine system. There is a large poster on the side of our fridge. Every time I get called “loca” he gets fined s/5. And it gets recorded on the fridge. Budget for it or go broke. 

“Human” rights? What´s good for the goose…

You never know where a conversation will lead. Having said that, conversations with Peruvian taxi drivers are usually quite predictable. “You aren´t Peruvian are you?” “So where are you from? Brazil?” “Oh the Caribbean?” (blank look) “So how long have you been in Peru?” “¿Y que tal la comida?” And I sigh.

Earlier this year I flagged down a taxi to take me to work. I had been driving in Lima for a while but had left the car in the tailler for servicing so was experiencing anew the delights of Peruvian driving and conversation. Having reached the usual conversational watershed of revealing that I was here because I had married a Peruvian, the taxi driver said, “Oh, so you like Peruvian men?” So far, so predictable. But it was International Women´s Day and I was feeling mischievous. “They´re OK, but they need a bit of training” I said idly.

He peered at me in the rear-view mirror while negotiating a dangerous bend on the Costa Verde. “¿Que significa esto?”

“Well they tend to be a bit machista” I explained. “Ah” he intoned wisely, “yes, I understand. I am all for women´s rights. Violence against women is bad, you can´t allow it. Just the other day I picked up a couple. They asked me to take them from Miraflores to Monterrico. They seemed quiet enough in the backseat, until I heard un par de lisuras (curse words). Next thing, he hit her. She swung her handbag at him and then golpes (blows)! cachetazos (slaps)! I looked back and he had his elbow across her throat, pressing her against the door.”

He had my attention now. Peru has been virtuous and vocal in its adoption of the rights of women and other minorities. I was interested to see how this translated in practice.

“Well”, said the middle-aged taxista, ruthlessly cutting off a fellow road user, “I asked them ‘¿que pasa? Why are you fighting?’ and I leaned back and blocked the guy´s hand as he was swinging again.  ´You don´t hit women’ I said”.

“No te metas!” came the reply.

“Then I swung back and hit him and his mouth started to bleed”, continued my new best friend. He said he then stopped the car and they both got out and started to fight.

I was fascinated. He was a good raconteur and I could vividly imagine the en-route tussle; the car swerving through rush-hour traffic (it is almost always rush-hour traffic between Miraflores and Monterrico); the dramatic screech to a halt and the middle-aged Good Samaritan scrambling out and facing off against his younger and more aggressive opponent. A crowd formed and the serenazgo (municipal citizen´s watch) and the police arrive “in a big pickup truck”. The serenazgo calmed things down within their jurisdictional powers (which presumable do not include the power to arrest) and one policia started taking names with a view, no doubt, to kicking ass – entirely within their jurisdiction. When asked for his documentos the male passenger accused the taxi driver of trying to rob him. At which point the taxista leapt forward and punched him indignantly on the nose. “Mariconazo!” he exclaimed. And that´s where he lost me.

Maricon, according to the Urban dictionary (and all others) is a:

“Derogatory term; crude word for a gay man used by straight men and women to insult gay men or to question the masculinity of straight men. Comparable to faggot.

So, according to my enlightened superhero, anybody who would sink so low as to hit a woman or lie to the police is gay. Not only gay, but super, extra gay: “mariconazo!” “azo” serving to enlarge and magnify the original word to which it is attached.

The taxista said proudly that he had punched the mariconazo right in front of the policeman. He then told the policia to ask the chica (not mujer) in the back of the car what really happened.

When asked by the cop, the woman – mouth and nose bloodied – said that her husband had beaten her. The policeman then asked, reasonably enough, “Which one is your husband?” She pointed to the non-taxista. The taxista said “you see, and he lied and said I was trying to rob him!” and punched the dude on nose again in front of the police. The antagonist, being, according to the taxista, a pituco (Peruvian slang for an upper-class, self-entitled asshole), started threatening the taxista “(mariconazo!) “I will find you, you will see. You don´t know who you are dealing with! I will find you, I have contacts, etc. etc.” Replied the taxista: “well wait until your face is all healed up so I can smash it in again!”

“Right” said the policeman, “you will all have to come to the station to make a report and lay charges.” “Oh no” said the woman. “I´m not going to any station. And I am not going to Monterrico either. Take me to Camacho”. “But señora” said the cop, sitting in the front seat of the taxi while the pituco was being restrained in the pick-up behind by the serenazgo and other policemen, “you have to make a report”. No said the chica. (“She was media-china” confided the taxi driver to me) “No report. My husband´s brother is a coronel in the army. No report, just take me to Camacho. I am the victim and I hired this taxi and I want him to take me to Camacho.”

The taxista said to the policeman, “and what about my documents? You have my documents and you see that the other guy was the aggressor (mariconazo!) so what about giving me my documents?”

The policia, still sitting in the front seat of the car, considered the situation. “You know that the pituco will get the coronel to find you don´t you?” he said to the taxista. “And I am obliged to take you in to make a report. So here is what we´ll do. I will stay in this car, the pick–up will follow. You take the chica to Camacho and then we go to the station. When we get there I will give you your documents and then you high-tail it out of there before we can do anything.”

So off to Camacho went the motorcade. They arrived at a house and the taxista knocked on the door. Out came “un chino enorme, cabezon, pelado”. (A Chinese man with a huge bald head) “Look” said the taxista, “your daughter is in the car and her husband has mashed up her nose and mouth”. “What??” exclaimed the chino enorme, turning back into the house and bellowing for all his male relatives.

They continued to the station. “Right” said the policeman to the taxista, slipping him his documents, “go park over there”. “Si señor” said the taxista loudly, and promptly gunned his car towards Av. Javier Prado without a backward glance. “Ha!” he told me. “If the pituco was smart enough to remember my licence plate so be it. If not…ha!”

I was so fascinated by his narrative that I almost missed the turning to my office. Where to start? What to say? Applaud the staunch defence of the rights of women (or chicas) by the intrepid, middle-aged taxi driver? Admire the resourcefulness of the policeman who clearly believed the innocence of the taxi driver but recognized the inevitableness of retribution from the pituco and his coronel uncle? Accept his obvious powerlessness to apply the law as written? Should I express my indignation about the common reference to “chicas” rather than “mujeres”?

The story drew to a close just as we drew up outside my office and I all but ran inside, anxious to make notes. At first blush there were a number of unlikely heroes. The indignant taxi driver who could have kept his eye firmly on the road and driven the feuding couple from Miraflores to Monterrico wthout intervention. The resourceful policemen who did his best within his means – in the face of pituco power – to see justice done.

But all day and every day since one word keeps ringing in my head “mariconazo!, mariconazo!”

The fact that it was used so easily and unconsciously by all of the protagonists in this fascinating drama bothered me immeasurably. I started the original conversation and my taxista was clearly proud that he had demonstrated his enlightenment by beating up the pituco but at what price was my admiration won?

Months later I read a facebook post by a good friend of mine decrying bullfighting. She was absolutely disgusted by it and cried the whole time. She ended the post by saying something to the effect that the matadors claim to be brave by fighting the bulls but “I do not find those cowardly maricones in the least bit sexy”.

Soooo: Maricon equals woman beater. Maricon equals liar. Maricon equals coward.

And this from people who are doing the right thing.

We haven´t come that far baby.

Matrimonial Maths

Poor Brutus, with himself at war,
Forgets the shows of love to other men. (Julius Caesar 1.2.46)

“At the same time, I wanna hug you
I wanna wrap my hands around your neck
You´re an asshole but I love you
And you make me so mad I ask myself
Why I´m still here…
But I hate you, I really hate you
So much I think it must be true love…” (Pink, True Love)

Trying to have a conversation with my husband is like trying to exfoliate with a cheese grater. Like backscratching with a bear claw, picking your teeth with an electric eel. Monosyllabic, vituperative, sullen in turns with the occasional transient flash of humor and affection, there is never any guarantee of his mood, response, reaction. You therefore spend 100% of your time being anxious and fearful that his reaction to any given attempt at conversation will be brutal and being correct 90% of the time, leaving you pathetically and disproportionally thrilled 10% of the time. A simple cheerful grunt lifts the spirits and inspires an idiotic grin. On his good days, if I happen to be in the vicinity when he emerges from bed he MIGHT flap his hand in my general direction by way of greeting.

Did you ever have one of those boyfriends at school who would break up with you on Friday afternoon and make up with you on Monday morning? Come on, you know the ones I mean. It usually happened the very weekend there was a party or some other social event that he clearly calculated would be more fun if he were single. Well I married one of them.

Oh no, don´t get me wrong, he doesn´t want to go out and party like a young stud. Noooo, it is far more subtle and cunning than that. For him, family life during the week is fairly legitimately limited to coming home from work late bearing the occasional pizza and relaxing on the couch while hearing about the children´s exploits from me.  Our weekday live-out nanny and I take care of the rest. But on weekends, when no domestic assistance is available and neither of us are at work, it is a bit more difficult to justify doing fuck-all around the house for two whole days. So what better way to avoid domestic duties than to manufacture a Friday offence, get offended and retire in high dudgeon to the couch in front of the TV until late Sunday night?

No, I am NOT exaggerating. My husband is capable of sustaining a snit for longer than the Queen of England has been on the throne. He once retired to his bed and refused to speak to anyone for two weeks, getting up only at night when everyone was asleep in order to prowl the kitchen for sustenance. He sails through two days of the sulks like Usain Bolt cruising across the 100 metre finishing line.

And he is a perfectionist. I am not talking about some half-assed monosyllabic-replies-only hissy fit. No, nada de eso. He is a full-on Easter Island statue.

On one occasion, alone in the house, he refused to even get up and answer the door, leaving his family banging futilely outside and asking the wachiman to climb through the window to let us in. The couch is only about eight feet from the door.

When he does speak you really wish he hadn´t. His normally irresistible three year old son skipped up to him asking “Papi, papi can we…” “No jodas” came the instant reply.

Meanwhile, life must go on and those kids won´t raise themselves, so I rush around dispensing asthma medicine every three hours, chauffeuring them to and from weekend activities, baking low-carb snacks for the week ahead, grocery shopping, listening to endless complaints of “papi won´t let me watch TV!!!”, building and rebuilding lego mini-figures, playing football in the corridor and endlessly debating issues of appropriate attire and the acceptable age to get a tattoo.

And there he sits, like a resentful granite boulder in the middle of the familial stream, interrupting the smooth flow of family life, making the waters eddy and ripple, adjusting to find a way around him and continue forward as best they can. Six-foot-three-inches of pure seething disgruntlement. And then (usually on Sunday evening), just when he is almost left behind, forgotten, the river of life having moved on and regained its former placidity, some subtle seismic tremor in the highlands of his brain will suddenly dislodge him and he will come rumbling and rushing downstream, eager to catch up and play, causing shrieks of delighted laughter from the children as we once again take off on surprise family weekend getaways and impromptu shopping trips to Wong…until the next time.

So why stay? Well for one thing, over time the percentages seem to be evening up. It ain´t 50:50 by a long shot when it comes to domestic duties but the 90:10 grumpiness to charm ratio has gradually been reversed to somewhere in the 30:70 range. He is now more llama than guanaco. His macho latino disdain for the minutiae of child-rearing has gradually dwindled and he has been known to prepare meals and change clothes. His marathon sulks have become short sprints. Yes, he is still an infuriating Easter Island statue but he is our infuriating Easter Island statue. There are not many like him so we think we should keep him – one day he might become a collector´s item and be worth a lot of money.

As any pop-psychologist will tell you, marriage is give and take, up and down, never perfect, blah, blah, blah and the reasons you choose to stay in one don´t always add up.

And anyway, I was always crap at maths.

Educational Laissez-Faire

I consider myself quite the left wing radical but there is one area in which I apply the principle of laissez-faire and that is the realm of my children´s education.

I figure that the more I pay a school to educate my child the less I should be involved in the actual process. Yeah, yeah, I can hear the gasps and protests about “the home environment is essential” and “parental support is key” etc, etc. All quite true but please, don´t expect me to be on call 24/7.

The education system here seems to assume that one parent (i.e. the mother) does not have a full time job and is therefore free to attend school functions at 11 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. Parents are exhorted to attend charlas on nutrition and hygiene at 6 pm – an hour when I am either still at work or thinking about kicking back with a stiff drink on my terraza.

One school I heard of even grades on parental involvement, so if the parent doesn´t attend the multitude of talks and mid-morning displays of kindergartners´ scribbling abilities, the child is penalized and loses points on his or her final grades. Excuse me?!

I pay the nursery school my three-year-old son attends to keep him busy, teach him to share and play nicely with others and send him home sleepy. I even toilet trained him myself. I do NOT pay them to send home homework every Thursday with instructions for his parents to do it with (i.e. for) him and send the folder back, sin falta, on Monday.

I pay the expensive fees at my daughter´s international school so they will give her a wider-than-Peruvian world view and metaphorically kick her ass when she doesn´t turn in her homework. If I was planning to painstakingly pore over her homework assignments every night or help my son scrunch up bits of red paper to stick on to a paper apple I would have saved my money and home-schooled them myself!

When my son was being “assessed” for entry into an expensive primary school, the school psychologist asked my husband in an accusatory tone, “are you sure you spend enough time interacting with him?” He replied indignantly “we spend as much time as we can with him when both parents have to work in order to afford to send him to your school.”

And don´t get me started on the hidden costs. I supposedly pay an all-inclusive fee but get hit by Smuggies on a weekly and monthly basis with urgent last-minute requests for materials to make a maqueta necessitating after-work trips to Wong supermarket and expenditure on styrofoam, glitter, modelling clay, pipe cleaners and bristol board.

In the case of the Baby Inca it´s the shows. The nursery puts on an annual Christmas show, an Easter show, a Mother´s day show, a Father´s day show and a show for Fiestas Patrias. Each one of these requires an outlay of s/40 to rent a badly-fitted costume which could be purchased for a quarter of the price in the local market. Which is no doubt why they never tell me what role my child is playing until they send the costume home the night before.

Now I don´t want to come across as some kind of maternal Grinch here. As anyone who has the misfortune to be my friend on Facebook can attest, I oooh and ahhh over my kids´ every achievement with the best of them. But I no longer have the space to store every piece of paper on which my son has drawn a squiggly line at school. And as for his thespian career, in three years he has not progressed further than the chorus line. I know we can´t all be stars but how come I keep seeing the same faces in the good parts? I´m just saying.

And it´s not easy bigging-up your child on Facebook when his roles tend to be Second Palm Tree From the Left; Fourth Pebble on the Beach; Third Wolf (that was the year he had his first line. When asked “how does a wolf go?” he replied, in ringing Shakespearian tones, “Ahooo!”); or one of a group of background chickens.

And they always have the shows at 2 pm on a Saturday afternoon, effectively screwing up your first day of rest for the week. And 2 pm. Really? In Peru? Where lunch is sacredly and leisuredly taken at 1 pm? Really? Despite several irritated notes of complaint by me and assurance from the teachers every year about a timely start, every year the other parents wander in at least 45 minutes late while I snarl and stew on the plastic chairs provided in the church hall.

My irritation at having to wait for unconcerned parents who clearly have nothing better to do on a weekend is exacerbated by the sure and certain knowledge that the theme of the performance, whatever the occasion, is going to be a religious one, crammed with barefaced indoctrination and shudderingly sexist stereotypes.

Take his recent Christmas performance. His nursery is nothing if not ambitious, I´ll give them that. This show spanned several centuries of world “history” all the way from the Creation to the Nativity.

First on stage was God. A delightfully small and grumpy individual clad in a white robe, firmly clutching his Francesco Bernoulli model car.[1] Accompanied by narration from the nursery´s Director, he reluctantly created the world, nudged on by one of the teachers. He then retired sobbing, devoured a bottle of milk and fell sound asleep on his mother´s lap. Which, considering the alternative possible outcomes of His wrath, was a blessing indeed.

Next on stage strode the fruits of His labour. Apparently, on an empty stomach and in a temper the Almighty tends to create flora and fauna consisting entirely of a bemused cow, a lugubrious donkey, a diminutive frog and three chubby dancing flowers.

Now you see what I mean? You would think from the creation of the world to the birth of the Messiah there would be plenty of plum roles to go around. Yet one kid played the Sun; Adam AND the Angel Gabriel, with a costume change each time (but wearing the same pair of orange Crocs).  And what did the Baby Inca get to be? A frog.

No, I am being bitter and unfair. He was not a frog. He was THE frog.

The Frog´s biggest fan

Anyway, the thus assembled global population proceeded to execute a game but cautious song and dance rendition of (what else?) Old MacDonald Had a Farm in Spanish. This was closely followed by the appearance of Adam, who had shed his Sun outfit in favour of a flesh-coloured leotard and a pair of green shorts. Adam delivered his lines crisply, noting his loneliness and asking God to intervene on his behalf. He then retired for a nap, dutifully stretching himself face-down on stage so stiffly that the orange Crocs didn´t touch the ground. Eve was then unleashed upon him.

I use the term advisedly. Dressed in a sort of Hawaiian dancer outfit, she did not walk onto the stage so much as sashay, one arm extended to the side, wrist drooping seductively, the other placed firmly on her hip. After circling him once, her no doubt bewitching presence awoke Adam and he assumed a well-choreographed expression of surprise and awe – hands on either side of his face, mouth and eyes wide open. They then proceeded to dance salsa to a rousing Juan Luis Guerra number.                  .

A merciful veil was drawn over the unfortunate incident of the snake and the apple and we proceeded straight to the Immaculate Conception.

Mary was seen dressed in modest pink robes busying herself around the house with broom and duster. “Mary,” said the narrator, “loved to sweep and clean. And she loved to pray. She had long conversations with God”.

Whereupon the Sun/Adam, now transformed into the Angel Gabriel via a white robe and gold tinsel-trimmed wings, emerged and gave Mary the glad tidings. He said firmly that she was going to have a baby and that he would be El Salvador!  Mary showed the appropriate gladness but asked “how can that be, I am not married”. The Angel Gabriel – who had displayed excellent diction in all his roles up to this point – mumbled something unintelligible into the proffered microphone then rallied and reiterated resoundingly “…and he will be El Salvador!”

Thus reassured Mary broke the news to a complaisant Joseph. “No te preocupes, yo voy a ayudarte a cuidar el bebé de Dios” and a celebratory song and dance number followed.

The rest, as they say, is history or, mejor dicho, biblical allegory. They went to Bethlehem on a wooden rocking horse; a hefty plastic Baby Jesus was born; a star in white strappy sandals led Balthazar, Melchior and Caspar to where it was all happening and they dutifully presented their gifts.

Ohmigod! I´m surrounded by arm-waving biblical maniacs!

Having been inexplicably absent from the manger scene the Frog reappeared for the grand finale and even managed to beat Adam to the back row spot next to Eve. Maybe it is this lack of understanding of his proper place in the celestial big picture that has been hindering his ability to capture the lead roles. And long may it last! The day I catch my son playing a salivating Adam opposite an undulating Eve is the day laissez-faire goes straight out the window.

---

[1] From the movie Cars II.

Portents and Omens

“Señora Juliet”, said my nanny one day, as she arrived breathless for work.  

“Ay Señora Juliet, I am so afraid!”

She was all atremble and I feared the worst: either her mother had another health crisis or she had got a better job and was about to abandon me.

Had there been floods in the sierra again and were they on the point of losing their home? Had some adolescent cousin turned up pregnant and confessed that the father was a married man with no inclination to take responsibility? All familiar Peruvian scenarios.

Reyda is not to be rushed when giving information.

“Ay Señora Juliet, I can´t believe it, but they said it was on the news!”

Some patient prodding revealed that she had received a terrified phone call from her younger sister the night before from their pueblo in Andahuaylas, in the Peruvian highlands.

“Ay Señora Juliet, tu puedes creer? A baby has been born with two horns and a tail!”

I had got up particularly early that morning. Lots of pending stuff at the office and I wanted to beat the traffic. If I left home before 7.15 I could get to work comfortably before 8am; any later and I would have to wait until the morning school rush was over to have any hope of finding a taxi willing to take me along the coast road to my office in Magdalena. But, clearly, discussion on the birth of the antichrist was not going to be disposed of in short order.

I attempted to assume an expression somewhere between intellectual curiosity and reassuring disbelief.

“Uh huh” I said.

My nanny is great but a bit long-winded when in a state of excitement. Her narrative style tends to the extremely literal: “My cousin said to me, ´Prima, you know what?” and I said, No, Prima´, I said, what?´”… and so on.

But bit by bit the shocking details emerged.

“Señora Juliet, the girl was a virgin, only 19 or 20 years old. She had been walking in the fields and you know how animals walk in the fields too. Well, she had on one of those wide skirts and as she walked an animal passed by and lifted up her skirt and that was all. Within 24 hours her belly started to swell and her parents took her to the doctor.”

Now I do not dispute the possibility of a 20 year old virgin lurking in the Peruvian highlands, but I have seen those skirts and they are wide enough to hide several mountain goats and the odd llama beneath them.

“Si Señora” she continued. “And when they got to the hospital they did a scan and the doctor said ´your daughter is going to have a baby´”.

“Uh huh” I said, glancing furtively at my watch.

“Señora Juliet, the baby was born right then! Only 24 hour hours later! And then when they saw the horns and the tail the father of the girl said “kill it!”

“Ah ha” I said.

“Si Señora, he said ´kill it´ and the doctors were going to kill it but as soon as the man said that, exactly 13 minutes after the baby was born, the baby said…”

“Ummmm” I said (“tick, tick, tick” said my watch). “The baby started talking?”

“Si, Señora! It said, ´kill me if you want but if you do, the following things will happen: Piura, Ica, Lima – and I can´t remember what other places it mentioned – will all be swallowed up by the sea.”

My nanny is a well-educated woman. Secondary school only but she has lived in Lima for many years. She has guided me through the pitfalls of the Gamarra garment district and bargained hard on my behalf in the treacherous byways of Plaza Hogar on a quest to purchase chests of drawers so I could hardly abandon her now in her hour of need. She takes excellent care of the Baby Inca and has a running battle with the teachers at his nursery, keeping them on the straight and narrow when they neglect to inform her of why he has a bump on his head or appears to have fallen into the “water” (Peruvian slang for a toilet bowl) at school.

If Lima was about to be inundated on the instructions of some belligerent baby Beelzebub I owed it to her to show some concern.

“Ummmm” I interrupted. “Where did your sister hear this?”

“The newspapers Señora! My mother can´t read but she saw a man in the street with a big pile of newspapers and a big group of people buying them so she bought one too and had the neighbour read it to her.”

Religious wingnuttery tends to flourish in remote regions (remember Jonestown?) and, as I myself can testify, publishing costs in Peru are relatively cheap. I was beginning to see a glimmer of light here.

“Has it been on the national news?” I asked.

“No Señora, I haven´t seen anything this morning”.

The Peruvian media are indefatigable in hunting down the most sensational and gory details of even the most innocuous of events. If the End of Days had been announced in even the farthest flung corner of the Andean cordillera trust me, the Peruvian press would have got the memo and there most certainly would have been live footage and heated talk show discussions within the hour.

I put this most reasonable observation to Reyda.

“Ay Señora, but Humala told the press not to report it! When the baby said he was going to drown all those places the doctors got frightened and sent for Humala and he ordered them not to let any press in.”

Peruvians are on a familiar one-name basis with their President and he obviously has preserved the common touch if he flew to the sierra on short notice at the request of the local doctors at the precise time that he was allegedly (according to the national press) in Argentina meeting with President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. But of course, in hyper-Catholic Peru, the birth of a horned baby constitutes a national crisis.

In addition to the Old Testament overtones, Andean communities are apparently highly susceptible to portents of evil and are perfectly capable of believing many impossible things before breakfast. Consider the Pishtaco, immortalized by Mario Varga Llosa in his novel Death in the Andes.

“According to folklore, [the Pishtaco] is an evil monster-like man, often a stranger and often a white man, who seeks out unsuspecting Indians, to kill them and abuse their bodies in disgusting ways, primarily by stealing their body fat for various nefarious cannibalistic purposes or cutting them up and selling their flesh as fried chicharrones[1]…

Preoccupation with body fat has a long tradition in the Andes region. In pre-Hispanic times, fat was so prized that a deity for it existed, Viracocha (Sea of fat)…Spanish missionaries were feared as Pishtacos by the Andean aboriginals, who believed they were killing people for fat with which to oil church bells to make them specially sonorous. In modern times similar beliefs held that human fat was needed to grease the machinery of sugar mills or that jet aircraft engines could not be started without a squirt of human fat. Pishtaco beliefs have affected international assistance programs, e.g. leading to rejection of the US Food for Peace program by several communities, out of fears that the real purpose was to fatten children, and later exploit them for their fat.”

(Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pishtaco)

In the face of such evident evil can one be surprised by the fear and loathing engendered by the birth of a horny, prehensile throwback?

I managed to both calm Reyda down and control my unworthy impulse to roar with laughter. But the Devil himself knows how I was going to explain my late arrival to my non-Peruvian boss.

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[1] An absolutely delicious Peruvian dish featuring deep fried pork, chicken or seafood.